We believe there's a massive opportunity for disrupting cloud storage, and for the last few years we've been building two storage technologies that seek to disrupt different parts of the cloud storage landscape: Project HSD (for high-IOPS workloads), and Project Silica (for long-lived cold data). 

In both projects we are building the storage from media all the way up the storage stack to the cloud service user API. This presents a wealth of unique research opportunities and challenges for systems research, as well as solving hard problems in physics, optics, machine learning, and more - both teams include researchers spanning all these areas working together. Clean-slate design for the cloud means co-designing and optimizing the entire hardware/software stack to achieve the best cost/performance for data centre deployments. Among other things, we are rethinking key-value stores; scheduling of resources ranging from robots to lasers to machine learning chips; new algorithms for media management, data placement, and error correction; hardware form factors and software interfaces; and much more. All this is based on a data-driven approach based on the workload demands of our partners in product teams across Microsoft. 

Responsibilities

In this role, you will work closely with other team members to innovate and drive the system design of next-generation cloud storage technologies. This could involve storage stack design; workload analysis of Microsoft cloud workloads; design and exploration of various system policies and configuration parameters through simulation; new resource management algorithms; disaster recovery; etc.

The researcher will have access to workloads from our internal product partners, and will work with experts in storage, hardware design, optical science, and machine learning. Additionally, they will have an opportunity to participate in their research community by disseminating their work through publications, conference attendance and service, etc.  

Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications 

• PhD in computer science or equivalent industry experience in a research environment, with a focus on storage systems, distributed systems, operating systems, networking, or related. 

• Capability for rapid and accurate development in, for example, C, C++, C#, or similar.  

• Creative and collaborative approach to problem solving. 

Preferred Qualifications 

• Publishing track record in computer systems (e.g., SOSP, OSDI, NSDI, Eurosys, FAST, ATC, SoCC, Sigcomm, etc.) 

• Experience working in large codebases. 

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran status, race, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable laws, regulations and ordinances. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application or the recruiting process, please send a request via the Accommodation request form.